Lindbergh: Parsing the 2014 PECOTA projections

From SABR member Ben Lindbergh at Baseball Prospectus on February 4, 2014:

The PECOTA projections are here, which means that many of you will spend the day exploring the weighted-means spreadsheet and the Depth Charts in search of surprises and confirmations that it’s okay to crush on the players whose performance you’ve been awaiting all winter. That’s exactly what we do when PECOTA’s keepers deliver the first file to the staff; we just have a head start.

We’ll be offering plenty of PECOTA-related content between now and Opening Day, but today, a quick tour is in order. Here’s a look at a few of the most fascinating projections I’ve seen so far, followed by a look at the players projected to improve or decline most dramatically relative to 2013, the closest comparables for recently retired players, and a summary of the weakest projected positions on 2014 contenders.